This year’s festival will feature a rich and diverse program showing films by great Italian director Federico Fellini as well as prominent Turkish directors Fatih Akın, Kutlu Ataman, Mehmet Kurtuluş, Cemal Erez and Yeşim Ustaoğlu

The Limak Ankara International Film Festival is preparing to reunite with the capital on its 18th anniversary to entertain Ankara movie buffs with a series of masterpieces by Turkish and international directors scheduled for April 12-22. Organized by the World Mass Media Research Foundation, this year’s festival will feature a rich and diverse program showing films by great Italian director Federico Fellini as well as prominent Turkish directors Fatih Akın, Kutluğ Ataman and Yeşim Ustaoğlu.

Speaking to the Anatolia news agency, festival coordinator Kıvanç Yalçıner said the festival would offer Ankara moviegoers short amateur films shot by famous directors during their student years. Some of the directors that the festival hosts are Fatih Akın, Kutluğ Ataman, Natali Yeres, Yeşim Ustaoğlu, Serdar Akar, Mehmet Kurtuluş, Cemal Erez and his wife Meral Erez and Tan Oral.

The festival will consist of different categories featuring a wide range of films. In the World Cinema category, films by world renowned Italian director Federico Fellini will be screened under the title of I remember… while movie enthusiasts will also have the chance to watch South Korean films under the title of New Korean Cinema: Love, Life and Death…

Arte Films Special Screening is another category in which four Arte films will be shown. In the From the Hell: The World is Fighting category, the festival audience can watch fiction films and documentaries about war and peace. In the Music Notes on Silver Screen category there are mostly musicals while the International Short Film category will feature awarded foreign short films, Detmold International Short Film Festival Selection, short films by the world famous short film director Jean Gabriel Periot, and also the short films from all over the world under the title of The Short Knows No Bounds.

Recent Turkish films will be shown in the National Feature Film Competition category and films from last year will compete in the categories of fiction, experimental and animation films in the National Feature Film category, with 16 nominee films for the fiction category, 12 for experimental and 12 for animation.Panel Discussions will be another colorful section of this year’s festival where the masters of the sector will share their opinions with the audience about cinema and music.

The festival is supported by the Culture and Tourism Ministry, Çankaya Municipality, Limak Ambassadore Hotel, Foreign Affairs Ministry, Atılım University, TV8 as well as newspapers Sabah, Cumhuriyet, Birgün, Hurriyet, Akşam; magazines, Altyazı, Sinema, Total Film, Cinemascope, and Sinematürk together with Ankara Life, Arkadaş Kültür Sanat, Radio D, Radio ODTÜ, beyazperde.com and sinema.com.

Aziz Nesin award to Fatma Girik: 

As a part of the festival the foundation, World Mass Media Research Foundation will give the Aziz Nesin award to veteran actress Fatma Girik for the efforts she has spent for Turkish cinema. The Mass Media Award will go to the Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival, which has institutionalized the tradition of film festival in Turkey and made Turkish cinema recognized all over the world while author Erhan Bener will receive the Plane-Tree of Art award for his contributions to Turkish literature.